Doak, Tom

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    The Genesis Scottish Open Rises in Stature

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    The course is considered a solid testing ground for the British Open, a major played just down the road a few days later.The Renaissance Club, the site of the Genesis Scottish Open that begins on Thursday, looks like it’s been there for hundreds of years, like so many other great links courses in Britain.Like all true links courses, it winds along the coast with few trees; wind, rain, heat and cold become issues for players. It has firm fairways that can kick a well-hit drive forward an extra 50 yards or punish an equally well-struck shot with an unlucky bounce.The course has high golden fescue grass that waves in the wind. Brown-tinged greens undulate subtly in the center and strikingly on the edges. And of course, deep bunkers swallow balls careening toward their targets.It’s in the best neighborhood in town for golf. Muirfield, home of the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers and regular host of the British Open, abuts the course. And down the road is North Berwick Golf Club, where the sport has been played since 1832.But the Renaissance Club, now in its fifth year of hosting the Scottish Open, opened in 2007 after two American brothers developed the club. The tournament course is the product of an extensive renovation in 2014, which opened up some of the holes with views of the water.Yet its architect, Tom Doak, is not known for building courses that host professional golf championships. This was his first.So how did the Renaissance Club come to host a tournament that has been growing in importance? (It offers entry into the British Open for players who place in the top five spots, and it is sanctioned by the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour, meaning more money and ranking points.)The change began in 2011 with a broader strategy to play on conditions that would approximate the British Open often held a few days later. The Scottish Open had been around, off and on and under various sponsors, for about 50 years at that point.The organizers partnered with Visit Scotland, the country’s tourist board, to find venues that would also capture a tourist’s imagination. While Scotland has a variety of topography for its golf courses, Scottish golf conjures up images of wind-ripped, bouncy courses.“We kicked off a links strategy in 2011 and decided to move from Loch Lomond to Castle Stuart,” said Rory Colville, the Genesis Scottish Open championship director. “We decided that it was in the players’ best interest to play links golf the week before the Open Championship. The economic benefit of the first Scottish Open at Castle Stuart was said to be in excess of 5 million pounds [about $6.3 million]. That’s a really positive thing.”Loch Lomond, which had hosted the tournament for more than a decade, was a parkland course on an estate with streams and trees that dated back centuries. It’s ranked as one of the best courses in the world. But its trees and streams don’t conjure up the same images of Scottish golf.Castle Stuart, like the Renaissance Club, is a modern course built to look like it has been on the land forever. The difference was in the design team.Opened in 2009, it was designed by Gil Hanse, an American architect who restored courses for the United States Open and the P.G.A. Championship, including Los Angeles Country Club and Southern Hills in Oklahoma. On Castle Stuart, Hanse worked with Mark Parsinen, who found the land, to build a course in the Highlands with wide vistas, firm fairways and deep bunkers.“Although at the time Castle Stuart was a relatively young golf course, it highlighted all you would want from a new links course as a venue,” Colville said. “It was a fair test of golf, but it was also the right type of test in the warm-up to the Open,” in that it was not set up to be overly penalizing.“Players don’t want to get beaten up going into a major championship,” he said. “Castle Stuart was the right type of golf course. Also, it had this fantastic scenic setting to showcase golf to the world. It was a really rewarding experience to take the Scottish Open up to the Highlands.” And it produced solid champions: Luke Donald, Phil Mickelson and Alex Noren.The strategy in those years was to use a rota, or schedule, of courses akin to what the British Open does in moving the championship to a set number of venues. For the Scottish Open, these included Royal Aberdeen, Gullane and Dundonald.“We had an exceptional experience at Royal Aberdeen,” Colville said about the tournament in 2014. “Justin Rose won there in great style. Rory McIlroy played there and went on to win the Open the week after that.”Gullane had the advantage of being close to the capital, Edinburgh, which increased the number of spectators.But top players balked at a rota before the official Open Championship rota. It meant they would potentially have to learn a new course each year. There were also economic reasons to host an event at the same stop with the same infrastructure planned out.The Renaissance Club is a true links course that winds along the coast with few trees to protect players from the elements. The course was extensively renovated in 2014, which opened up some of the holes with views of the water.Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images“At Loch Lomond, we built an event year after year,” Colville said. “We needed to find a home to make it the scale it needs to be. That’s tricky when you’re looking at a member club, with a larger number of members who don’t want the annual interference of golf course closure and interruption of their day to day golfing.”The Renaissance Club had been founded by the brothers Jerry and Paul Sarvadi. Paul is the chief executive of Insperity, a human resources company, and Jerry spent his career in aviation fuel.On the club’s 10th anniversary in 2018, Paul Sarvadi talked about his commitment to continuing to host the Scottish Open. “While proud of our first 10 years, we are even more excited about our next 10 years,” he said.Colville said the brothers had a passion to create a home for the Open.“They’ve built a long-term TV compound and parking facilities,” he said. “They’ve built the infrastructure that makes it feasible to hold the event year after year. They’ve made it a viable event.”They’ve also allowed tinkering to the course. “Our agronomy team has worked very closely with the club to improve the conditions and refine the golf course.”Doak, who declined to comment, is better known for designing destination venues on remarkable plots of land, like Barnbougle in Tasmania, Cape Kidnappers in New Zealand and Pacific Dunes in Oregon. He has largely eschewed commissions or restorations of courses that will host tournaments.“I never really thought I’d do tournament golf courses,” he told the Golf Channel in 2019. When asked what he did to create a course tough enough for the professionals, he added, “It’s a little bit getting inside their heads. You want to do things that make them think and make them play a little safe.”Since the Renaissance Club course was renovated in 2014, Doak has been less involved in year-to-year changes. The ownership group brought in Padraig Harrington, a three-time major champion and past Ryder Cup captain, to consult on the course from a tournament player’s perspective.“You get the perspective of someone with his links credentials to help refine the golf course and improve it,” Colville said. “He’s added some subtle design features to make the rough more penal and changed a lot of the fairway cut lines.”In the five years since the course began hosting the event, the Scottish Open has achieved elevated status with its sanctioning by the PGA and DP World tours. It has secured Genesis, the luxury-car company, as a title sponsor.And the field has grown stronger. Last year’s champion, Xander Schauffele, was the fifth-ranked player in the world after his victory.“We expect to be the best attended Scottish Open this year, with more than 70,000 spectators,” Colville said.“This year we have eight of the top 10 players in the world. That’s a vote of confidence that they like the golf course and like the facilities.” More

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      For the Scottish Open, the Renaissance Club Toughens Up

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      After it first hosted the Open in 2019, some players said the course was too easy. Changes were made.There has been a certain amount of grumbling — justified or not — about how some European Tour courses play too easy, most notably in 2019 when Rory McIlroy criticized the playability at the Renaissance Club in North Berwick, Scotland, which has hosted the Scottish Open since 2019.“I don’t think the courses are set up hard enough,” McIlroy told reporters at the time after the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship, also played in Scotland. “There are no penalties for bad shots.“I don’t feel like good golf is regarded as well as it could be. It happened in the Scottish Open at Renaissance. I shot 13-under and finished 30th [actually tied for 34th] again. It’s not a good test. I think if the European Tour wants to put forth a really good product, the golf courses and setups need to be tougher.”Other players soon voiced similar concerns. Ernie Els of South Africa said he agreed “100 percent” with McIlroy. “European Tour flagship tournaments and other top events need to be ‘major’ tough. Test the best!” Els said on Twitter.Edoardo Molinari of Italy, a three-time winner on the DP World Tour, said on Twitter: “Good shots must be rewarded and bad shots must be punished … it is that simple!”.Now, either from player input or owners simply making improvements, several courses have made changes in Europe and the United States, including the Renaissance Club, which is hosting the Scottish Open for the fourth time starting on Thursday.Padraig Harrington of Ireland, a three-time major winner who recently consulted with the course architect Tom Doak, admits it may have played easy at first.“The first year had low scoring, but that was because the European Tour didn’t know the golf course,” Harrington said about the initial year the club hosted the tournament. “They went very easy on the setup. That’s when the Renaissance Club’s owner, Jerry Savardi, said, ‘Let’s toughen up this course.’”Players like McIlroy were reacting to how officials set up the course for the tournament, Doak said. Consider the weather.“They’ve played the tournament there three years, and they’ve not had a normal weather year once,” he said. “It’s only been windy one or two days out of 12. It’s normally a windy place, it’s just like Muirfield next door. The conditions make a big difference.“But we don’t control the weather. You can’t build a links course and tighten it up so that it’s hard in benign conditions, because then when it’s windy the course is impossible to play. You have to have some leeway. So we’re going slow with the changes. We don’t want to overact.”Jon Rahm plays from the rough during the opening round of last year’s Scottish Open.Jane Barlow/Press Association, via Associated PressMost of the changes have been incremental.“The last two or three years we’ve mostly done little tweaks — fairway bunkers and contouring,” Doak said. “We’re just working around the margins. When I first designed the course [in 2008], we were just going to host an event once. You don’t really design for a one-time event, I design for member play.“But when you’re going to host a tournament on a repeated basis, then you need to think about the core function of the golf course and what we want to do differently because of that.”They’ve also let the rough grow. “We’re trying to get the rough rougher,” he said.The addition of fairway pot bunkers [deep with high side walls] far from the tee should present an increased challenge for players by forcing them to think more carefully about their shots and strategy, Doak said.“We never really thought about it when the course was first built,” he said. “I just never worried about players carrying 300 yards. But now a bunch of them can.”Other more significant changes were considered, like changing greens, or making them smaller.“It would be really difficult to change a green and get it back to the right condition before the next tournament.” Doak said. He is waiting to see how the course plays in more normal weather conditions. “Then we’ll see if we keep going with changes, or if we’re good where we are.”Harrington, who won the United States Senior Open last month, approached the changes from a player’s point of view.“As a player, you want those changes right now,” he said. “In a perfect world, all golf courses evolve. Golf courses are always changing. But you have to go slowly with these changes, and you can’t go into it making it tougher for the sake of making it tougher.A view of the 14th green at the Renaissance Club, which is hosting the Scottish Open for the fourth time.Andrew Redington/Getty Images“We’ve made subtle changes to separate the field a little bit,” Harrington said. “You have to make your golf course a stern test.“I love to punish the guy who doesn’t take it on, or chickens out and bails. But nobody wants to stop a player from playing well. We want to encourage them to play well, tease them, and ask them to hit more great shots. But we’re going to punish you if you take a shot and miss it.”Harrington also underscored how the changes will force players to more carefully select their shots.“We more clearly defined the penalties, and if a player wants to take them on, great,” he said. “But they separate the winner from the guy who finishes 10th. If you’re not playing well, there’s a lot of danger. But if you’re playing well, you’ll get rewarded.The goal of Savardi, the club’s owner. was simple. “I want a course that rewards the good shots, and punishes the bad ones,” he said. “No matter what the weather is.”Yet Savardi still has an eye on the weather.“The greens are bone dry, and our fairways are rock hard,” he said. “If the weather stays like this, this place is going to be on fire.” More

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      Finding the Balance Between a Golf Course and a Golf Community

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      For the course architect Tom Doak, holes and fairways are only two pieces of a puzzle that includes topography, infrastructure and much more.Golf may be one of Scotland’s gifts to the world, but the golf community — a course surrounded by real estate — is almost purely an American idea. A flyover of the American Sun Belt will show you homes packed tightly together with threads of green fairways running through their mostly parallel lines.Early in his career, the golf course architect Tom Doak chased golf community projects as he hunted work, but “I quickly realized I didn’t have the kind of name that would be attractive to someone wanting to buy a homesite,” he said. That lack of brand value may not be as apparent today as Mr. Doak has seven of his courses in the world’s Top 100, according to Golf Magazine. In Golf Digest, Doak has four designs among the Top 100 and seven others he has helped remodel.Tom Doak at Tumble Creek, a course he designed in Washington State.Courtesy Tom DoakThough Mr. Doak does not do a lot of developments, he is acutely aware of how one must incorporate housing, lodging, a clubhouse and other infrastructure into a world-class design without ever distracting from the golfing experience. The following interview has been edited and condensed.What are the challenges of designing a course when you know homes will be present? What are the things you consider?The biggest challenge is whether or not you will be allowed to put the golf holes where they fit the topography, or whether you will have to rebuild the topography around where the homes need to go.Every developer says they have given the golf course architect free rein on where to place golf holes, but that’s actually pretty rare, because it’s not efficient in terms of use of space. Developers don’t want to build a road with houses on only one side; that’s way more costly. So, a lot of times, if the property is going to be densely developed, you start with lots and roads from the outside boundary working in, and that width has a lot to do with determining where the golf holes will go.Your new project, Te Arai Links in New Zealand, features homes along the 18th fairway. That kind of housing arrangement seems to be designed for the course to be showcased when one looks outside. Does that affect how you might make the hole look? Or do you think more about how you might make the surroundings look for the golfer playing the hole?Well, as at Pebble Beach, the homes on the 18th at Te Arai are looking across the fairway toward the beach and the ocean, so I don’t know that it’s important for the features of the golf hole to stand out for the homeowners. You probably just want the fairway to look like your backyard. There might be some cases where I think about how a hole will look from the lots, but for the most part, my focus is on what the golfer will see.Homes set back a reasonable distance from the edge of the fairway are not that distracting, but if homes start to creep into the line of sight for the golfer playing the hole, then it starts detracting from the golfer’s feeling of playing “out in nature.”A backyard in Mamaroneck, N.Y., with the 11th hole of Winged Foot Golf Club just over the fence.Suzy Allman for The New York TimesThe American model of a golf community is not one that has been replicated very often internationally. Often the homes get the best land at the expense of the course. Can you speak to communities in America or internationally that you think have managed to achieve a balance?Lots of famous older courses have homes around the perimeter of the course — Merion, Winged Foot, Pebble Beach. Others, like Yeamans Hall or Fishers Island, were master planned to marry golf and real estate as we do today, but they were only trying to get 50 lots around the golf course, not 250.It’s when you build homes between the golf holes, that the priorities are truly flipped. There were tons of those sorts of golf developments built across America in the past 50 years. The lots got sold, and the developer was happy, but in the long term, many homeowners decided they didn’t really like having the course right in their backyard, where the maintenance crew is mowing a green at 6:30 in the morning, and where a stray shot into the backyard happens every couple of days.How can good course design aid the development of not only housing but other essential golf infrastructure such as a clubhouse, maintenance buildings, and even restroom and eating facilities?If we are thinking about the community as a whole while we design the course, we can incorporate things together much better. I’m working on a plan now where the halfway house for the course will be right next to a community park, so it can be used not just by golfers but by everyone who lives there as a great picnic spot.If we understand the land plan, we may be able to incorporate walking trails through the course, so residents can really enjoy the value of the open space the course provides. That’s harder to do in America because everything is so litigious, and the safety of nongolfers is a concern as is potential vandalism to the course. But my experience from overseas is that when the two are integrated, the residents come to understand the rhythms of golf and when it’s safe to proceed — even if they know nothing at all about golf — and the golfers respect the safety of their neighbors.One of the first projects you worked on was Long Cove Club in Hilton Head, S.C., built by your mentor, Pete Dye. Many of the homes on that course are hidden from golfers, though they are not far from the course. What did you learn about routing a course on that project that you carry with you today?Nearly every hole at Long Cove is surrounded by homes on both sides, but the corridor for the golf holes is wider than normal — 400 feet instead of 300 — and there were lots of trees on the site. We only clear about 150 to 200 feet of trees for our fairways, so there’s 100 feet of trees on each side of the hole before you get to the homeowner, whether he cuts down all his trees or not. That’s enough to make it feel like you are playing through the trees, not through the homes.Pete’s one rule was that he didn’t ever want to see a home located behind a green, where golfers would aim at it. The lots are always to the sides of the holes, but they don’t wrap around them. More